upon the many messages of joy or of sorrow,
of business and of pleasure, constantly going over the wire. But the
other world in which Miss Rogers lived was very different; the world
bounded by the four walls of a back room at Miss Betsey Kling's. It must
be confessed that there are more pleasing views than sheds in greater or
less degrees of dilapidation, a sickly grape-vine, a line of flapping
sheets, an overflowing ash barrel; sweeter sounds than the dulcet notes
of old rag-men, the serenades of musical cats, or the strains of a
cornet played upon at intervals from nine P. M. to twelve, with the
evident purpose of exhausting superfluous air in the performer's lungs.
Perhaps, too, there was more agreeable company possible than Miss Betsey
Kling.

Therefore, in the evening, Sunday and holiday, if not in the telegraphic
world of Miss Rogers, loneliness, and the unpleasant sensation known as
"blues" are not uncommon.

Miss Betsey Kling, who, although in reduced circumstances, boasted of
certain "blue blood," inherited from dead and gone ancestors--who
perhaps would have been surprised could they have known at this late day
how very genteel they were in life,--rented a flat in Hotel Norman, on
the second floor, of which she let one room; not on account of the
weekly emolument received therefrom, ah, no! but "for the sake of having
some one for company." In this respect she was truly a contrast to Mrs.
Simonson, a hundred and seventy-five pound widow, who lived in the
remaining suite of that floor, and who let every room she possibly
could, in order, as she frankly confessed, to "make both ends meet." For
a constant struggle with the "ways and means" whereby to live had quite
annihilated any superfluous gentility Mrs. Simonson might have had,
excepting only one lingering remnant, that would never allow her to hang
in the window one of those cheaply conspicuous placards, announcing:

"Rooms to Let."

Miss Betsey Kling was a spinster--not because she liked it, but on
account of circumstances over which she had no control,--and her
principal object in life, outside of the never-expressed, but much
thought-of one of finding her other self, like her, astray, was to keep
watch and ward over the affairs of the occupants of neighboring flats,
and see that they conducted themselves with the propriety becoming the
neighbors of so very genteel and unexceptionable a person as Miss Betsey
Kling. In pursuit of this occupation she was